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I decided that to qualify, the books had to be published between May 1 and August 1, and I had to have read them. Sometimes I do recommend books I haven't read, but I'm always clear about that, and indicate who on staff has read it or what customers are saying about it that makes me feel comfortable offering it as a suggestion.
Of course keeping a list to books I've read can sometimes be problematic. My reading is often event driven, but don't worry, a few books in that category qualified for the list. But because we don't do as many events over the summer, I have tended to read ahead to fall 2017 and even winter 2018. When it comes to books you like, the earlier the better. Did I mention its only 275 days until Liam Callanan's Paris by the Book comes out?
Bookselling This Week featured an interview of Finn Murphy by Jason! Here Jason asks about any blunders that might have cut short Murphy's career: "An advantage of being a long-haul driver is that I work alone. I am what John McPhee called 'the admiral of my fleet of one.' That means most of my really heinous mistakes weren’t/aren’t observed by my superiors. I was summoned to the North American Van Lines mover school early on in order to improve my quality score. They called the class 'Cargo Handling,' and it was a week-long intensive taught by retired award-winning drivers. I wasn’t given the option to refuse. In a warehouse in Indiana, North American had a two-story frame house mockup set up with all sorts of furniture and stairways with twists and turns. We moved furniture all day under the steely eyed veterans and received correction on how not to ding walls or break things."
Recently Lee was interviewed by Jeff Vasishta in Interview. There are at least five passages I'd love to quote, but I'm particularly interested in how diverse writers can sometimes be boxed in by the burder of expecting to focus on their cultural identity: "Yes, the faces are becoming more diverse, but pretty slowly. Likewise, I think writers of color still get trapped in an ethnic literature box in terms of what's expected of them, i.e., always having to write about the immigrant experience or discrimination or the old country or whatnot. That's partly why in this novel, I did something quietly subversive: I have a bunch of Asian, Latino, and African Americans as characters, but I never identify anyone by race. Hopefully in another generation or two, things will change."
Have I mentioned that Allegra Goodman does the same thing in The Chalk Artist? After writing a lot about Jewish culture, the only indicator that anyone might possibly be Jewish is a mention that one of the characters is named Lazar.
It should be announced any second that I have the Indie Next Pick quote for Mrs. Fletcher, which you can read on our item page of our website. If you want to see Perrotta, he's coming fairly close, to Andersons in Naperville, on Monday, August 7. Alas, I'll be at Boswell leading our in-store lit group. We're doing a thriller for the summer, Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. Had we been hosting Mr. Perrotta on a nearby date, I would guess we would have been reading The Leftovers.
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This was my first Trigiani, and I can see how fans can get wrapped up in this world. But the truth is that part of the package is Trigiani herself, which is why I have to do another plug for our joint event with Books and Company at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts on Wednesday, July 12, 7 pm. Tickets are $32.00 and you get a copy of Kiss Carlo too. You can bring older books to get signed, and yes, Trigiani will do photos.
On a very different note, I decided that I was short of some timely nonfiction, so at the last minute, I picked up and read Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Life. I'd read both Bad Feminist and An Untamed State, but I was remiss on getting to her newest, despite at least one well-known author egging me on to get my hands on this "amazing achievement." And Gay delivers a stunner, considering that this book was very hard for her to write. It was actually scheduled for last summer.
And for those who hope for some of the fun side of Gay, it's there too, at least a bit. She loves her some Ina Garten!
Finally, I looked at my list and saw I was truant on having a mystery or thriller on the list. I just finished Attica Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird, but that doesn't come out until September. So once again, I turned to Jason for advice and he suggested The Readymade Thief, another book on the Indies Introduce list for me, and this one has already had multiple reads from Boswell booksellers, let alone booksellers around the country. Yes, Augustus Rose's novel is his first, but what attention it's getting.
It's about a teenage girl who, thanks to her propensity to shoplift, is pulled into a vast conspiracy involving the philosophy of none other than Marcel Duchamp (the "readymade" in the title refers to Duchamp's readymade artpieces. Like Adriana Trigiani's Kiss Carlo, the story's setting is very Philadelphia, which was interesting to me, because despite its size, Philadelphia is rarely the focus of fiction compared to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, or even Detroit. And its art connections reminded me not just of another famous puzzler, The DaVinci Code, but also The Improbability of Love, which despite having more of a romance element, does for Watteau what The Readymade Thief does for Duchamp. It makes you want to know more!
“Lee is a 17-year-old girl who has gotten into a bit of trouble. Not that she is innocent, or completely guilty either. She runs with the wrong crowd, steals something that is not hers, and now she is on the run with nobody to turn to. Rose takes readers into the underbelly of Philadelphia, the sections that people have abandoned, to solve the mystery Lee has fallen into, which has to do with the famous artist Duchamp. Rose melds together information and story methods with amazing skill, drawing on secret societies, hacking, art theft, conspiracies, drugs, and so much more. This plot moves; it does not slow down until it reaches the conclusion, which will have you gasping for breath. Such a brilliant journey.” (Jason Kennedy on The Readymade Thief)
Like many thrillers, there are some dangling threads afterwards - what exactly is going to happen to all those zombie-like teens roaming the streets? But obviously someone who thinks about these things is maybe not in the right frame of mind; it would be like watching Wonder Woman for the continuity errors.
Want to hear more? Tune into Lake Effect.
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